IMO, more important than always being "accurate" is being consistent. I just realized I was using a completely WRONG calorie stat for one of my main foods. I was off calories on it by about 20% (my hummus was 60 cals instead of 50). This didn't affect my weight loss because I was consistently wrong - I still lowered cals when I needed to, in order to keep the weight coming off.
Don't get me wrong, I definitely think it's important to be as accurate as possible, and to weigh (not measure) your food. But I think, long-term, it's not really worth the stress to be constantly worried about whether your calorie count is accurate to within the single digits.
BTW, I'm another Livestrong user, but there are lots of good sites out there. Find one you like and stick to it.
I've tried or looked around at calorieking, dailyplate, the calorie counter at sparkspeople, and fitday, and personally I find fitday to be by far the best, most comprehensive and most detailed (ie. it seems to have the most foods in the database), plus it gives you nutrition stats (ie. tells you what nutrients you aren't getting enough of), weight goal progress graphs and all sorts of other cool stats and graphs. It also has a mood section where you can record your mood at any time of day, which is definitely useful for emotional over-eaters like me in helping to see patterns in my bingeing etc.
The real key to being accurate with a calorie counter is to enter A LOT of your own custom foods. Yes, it's time consuming to enter them all, but calorie content can vary between brands or over time (like Jen's example of the hummus), so you really need to be relying on the nutritional labels on the package of food more than relying on the foods in the database. The only thing I don't have custom foods for and just use the counts in the database are fruits and veg, and a few other basics like eggs, nuts and olive oil. Anything like breads, cereals, oatmeal, yogurts, soups, dressings, dips and hummus, crackers, cheese I always enter my own food based on the calorie content for the specific brand I am using, rather than just going with the generic "bran cereal" or whatever is in the database. Even peanut butter can vary somewhat in calories and fat content from one brand to another!
One of the things I love about the veg and fruit on fitday though is that they are incredibly detailed. Usually you can select the prep method (raw, from frozen, from fresh boiled, canned, fat added in cooking, fat not added in cooking, salt added, salt not added, etc) and I also like how it lets you select like one cup in chunks or one cup shredded or one cup mashed or with most veg you even select down to the exact number you are eating like "15 brussel sprouts", "10 medium carrots", "10 grapes", etc. It does let me feel that I am being fairly accurate, although of course you will never be entirely bang on because even fruits can vary in the sugar content depending on the time of year, their ripeness etc, which can change the calorie content slightly. The important thing is just to write EVERYTHING down so that you are being accountable to yourself and do try to measure or weigh all your food as much as possible.
I've tried or looked around at calorieking, dailyplate, the calorie counter at sparkspeople, and fitday, and personally I find fitday to be by far the best, most comprehensive and most detailed (ie. it seems to have the most foods in the database)
FitDay must have gotten a lot better then! I was a huge avid FitDay user for a long time, then I realized it didn't have nearly as many foods as any of the other sites. I found I was always entering custom foods with fitday, but now I never have to.
Most other sites allow for member's to share data, this can be good or bad if someone enters something wrong.
Anyway, for a while I used SparkPeople - it is good but a bit cumbersome - so for on the computer I like Livestrong My Daily Plate but my absolute fav is My Fitness Pal because the app rocks my socks. I don't really like it on the computer though (the website kinda sucks) - but it has every food I ever eat and lots of times separate entries for Canadian foods because the calories differ.
For websites I like My Daily Plate better because it searches on the fly, meaning you never have to really leave the page to enter a food. It shows you the food + calories as you type it out and then you just hit add. My Fitness Pal Website makes you load every single food to see the calories before you add, to check if they are right (the app doesn't do this).
EDIT - I just went to fitday and searched "boston pizza" and it came back with boston baked beans as the first result, and tons of other options but no boston pizza - at least no on the first page. Also can't find the salad dressing I brought for lunch. Of 2 searches - FitDay - 0 / My Fitness Pal and My Daily Plate 2
Hmmm, well I suppose it's just a matter of personal preference then! As I said, I find that fitday has the most options for veggies and fruits, including every detail of how they are prepared and how you are serving them, which is what I need most for my personal calorie counting. I didn't find that other sites had anywhere near that amount of detail when it comes to the fruit and veg. I can see if you were searching for stuff like restaurant food, fast food, lean cuisine or brand name stuff that it might not be the best option though. I have indeed noticed that it doesn't have a lot of that stuff but personally I don't use it for anything like that because I have a whole food lifestyle. On the rare occasion that I eat subway or a piece of pizza or something like that, I find it better to go to the company's website and look up the exact nutritional info for what I ate, including toppings, dressings, etc so that it is as accurate as I can hope to be and then enter a custom food. I know daily plate has entries for all of the subway sandwiches and I suppose using that would be fine if I just wanted a ballpark figure for my veggie sub, but since it's just a generic entry it doesn't take into account what/how much dressing I ask for on my sub, the increased sodium that comes from me asking for extra pickles, etc, so I find in the long run I would have to create a custom entry anyways using Subway's nutritional info from their website.
I feel you on the different Canadian food thing though! Again, that's one of the main reasons I pretty much custom everything because I know all of the entries for brand name products are based on the american version of the food, not the canadian one. I know that a lot of the big name cereals like Raisin Bran, Special K etc will have the exact same name and purple box in Canada but the nutritional information is different for the Canadian product compared to the American.
Oh, and the search can definitely be a bit finnicky sometimes, so I completely agree that fitday should work on improving their search. Sometimes you have to try a few different words to find what you're looking for, which can get annoying, and it often seems to have issues with plurals (like if I search "dried figs", I can't find anything, but if I search for just "fig" without the "s" then finally I'll find what I'm looking for).
I use fitday too. It has it's limitations, but it's what I started with a long time ago (I've been on this journey a few times) so it has all my old data and I'd hate to switch at this point.
alicia89 - I do hear you on the fruits and veggies, sometimes it like seriously? Where is the 1 cup steamed broccoli (as an example)? My Fitness Pal does last there a little bit. FitDay is very good about having the options for different fruits and veggies and the way they are cooked! The search has always been weird, and it's been 5 years since I really used it - you would think they would fit it?
For me, it is about what is fastest I guess and doing it on my phone. To be fair, I lost weight the best when using FitDay. But that is more me having mental blocks more then anything I think.
I prefer my daily plate (like another poster said, now livestrong). I like being precise, so being able to find my specific brand of brown rice, refried beans, soy milk, etc. is important to me. Plus with livestrong you can create meals and save them, so if you eat something regularly it's easy to input.
I prefer my daily plate (like another poster said, now livestrong). I like being precise, so being able to find my specific brand of brown rice, refried beans, soy milk, etc. is important to me. Plus with livestrong you can create meals and save them, so if you eat something regularly it's easy to input.
That's precisely what I liked about it. Not only that, but I knew of this site before the others were created.
Just join a few and explore what each have to offer.
I need a good online site for nutrition stats.
